No More Learning

Now the centralization of the community was abandoned, partly through the admission of the half-burgess communities to the full franchise, partly through the accession of numerous more remote burgess- colonies to its ranks but the older system of incorporation was not resumed with reference to the allied communities.
It cannot be shown that after the complete subjugation of Italy even single Italian community exchanged its position as an ally for the Roman franchise probably none after that date in reality acquired Even the transition of in
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dividual Italians to the Roman franchise was confined almost solely to the case of magistrates of the Latin communities
52) and, special favour, of individual
admitted to share at the founding of burgess-colonies. 1
cannot be denied that these changes defacto and de jure in the relations of the Italian subjects exhibit at least an intimate connection and consistency. The situation of
the subject classes was throughout deteriorated propor tion to the gradations previously subsisting, and, while the government had formerly endeavoured to soften the dis tinctions and to provide means of transition from one to another, now the intermediate links were everywhere set aside and the connecting bridges were broken down. As within the Roman burgess-body the ruling class separated itself from the people, uniformly withdrew from public burdens, and uniformly took for itself the honours and advantages, so the burgesses in their turn asserted their distinction from the Italian confederacy, and excluded more and more from the joint enjoyment of rule, while transferring to double or triple share in the common burdens. As the nobility, in relation to the plebeians, re turned to the close exclusiveness of the declining patriciate, so did the burgesses in relation to the non-burgesses the plebeiate, which had become great through the liberality of
its institutions, now wrapped itself up the rigid maxims
non-burgesses
of patricianism. The abolition of the
cannot in itself be censured, and, so far as concerned the
Thus, as well known, Ennius of Rudiae received burgess-rights from one of the triumvirs, Q. Fulvius Nobilior, on occasion of the founding of the burgess-colonies of Potentia and Pisaurum (Cic. Brut. 20, 79) whereupon, according to the well-known custom, he adopted the
fraenomen of the latter. The non-burgesses who were sent to share in the foundation of a burgess-colony, did not, at least in this epoch, thereby acquire de jure Roman citizenship, although they frequently usurped (Liv. xxxiv. 42) but the magistrates charged with the founding of colony were empowered, by a clause in the decree of the people relative to each case, to confer burgess-rights on limited number of persons (Cic
pro Balb, 21, 48).
passive burgesses
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motive which led to belongs presumably to another connection to be discussed afterwards; but through its abolition an intermediate link was lost. Far more fraught with peril, however, was the disappearance of the distinction between the Latin and the other Italian communities. The privileged position of the Latin nation within Italy was the foundation of the Roman power that foundation gave way, when the Latin towns began to feel that they were no longer privileged partakers in the dominion of the powerful cognate community, but substantially subjects of Rome like the rest, and when all the Italians began to find their position equally intolerable. true, that there were still distinctions the Bruttians and their companions in misery were already treated exactly like slaves and con ducted themselves accordingly, deserting, for instance, from the fleet in which they served as galley-slaves, whenever they could, and gladly taking service against Rome and the Celtic, and above all the transmarine, subjects formed by the side of the Italians class still more oppressed and intentionally abandoned by the government to contempt and maltreatment at the hands of the Italians. But such distinctions, while implying gradation of classes among the subjects, could not withal afford even remote com pensation for the earlier contrast between the cognate, and the alien, Italian subjects. A profound dissatisfaction prevailed through the whole Italian confederacy, and fear alone prevented from finding loud expression. The proposal made in the senate after the battle at Cannae, to give the Roman franchise and seat in the senate to two men from each Latin community, was made at an un
seasonable time, and was rightly rejected but shows the apprehension with which men in the ruling community even then viewed the relations between Latium and Rome. Had second Hannibal now carried the war to Italy, may be doubted whether he would have again been thwarted
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by the steadfast resistance of the Latin name to a foreign domination.
But by far the most important institution which this The epoch introduced into the Roman commonwealth, and that PTonncea at the same time which involved the most decided and
fatal deviation from the course hitherto pursued, was the
new provincial magistracies. The earlier state-law of Rome
knew nothing of tributary subjects : the conquered com
munities were either sold into slavery, or merged in the
Roman commonwealth, or lastly, admitted to an alliance
which secured to them at least communal independence
and freedom from taxation. But the Carthaginian posses
sions in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, as well as the kingdom
of Hiero, had paid tribute and rent to their former masters :
if Rome was desirous of retaining these possessions at all, it was in the judgment of the short-sighted the most
and undoubtedly the most convenient, course to administer the new territories entirely in accordance with the rules heretofore observed. Accordingly the Romans simply retained the Carthagino-Hieronic provincial constitution, and organized in accordance with it those provinces also, such as Hither Spain, which they wrested from the barba rians. It was the shirt of Nessus which they inherited from the enemy. Beyond doubt at first the Roman government intended, in imposing taxes on their subjects, not strictly to enrich themselves, but only to cover the cost of administration and defence ; but they already deviated from this course, when they made Macedonia and Illyria tributary without undertaking the government or the guardianship of the frontier there. The fact, however, that they still maintained moderation in the imposition of burdens was of little consequence, as compared with the conversion of their sovereignty into a right yielding profit at all ; the fall
was the same, whether a single apple was taken or the tree was plundered.
»9
judicious,
Position *****
Punishment followed in the steps of wrong. The new provincial system necessitated the appointment of governors, whose position was absolutely incompatible not only with the welfare of the provinces, but with the Roman constitu tion. As the Roman community in the provinces took the
place of the former ruler of the land, so their governor appeared there in the king's stead ; the Sicilian praetor, for example, resided in the palace of Hiero at Syracuse. It is true, that by right the governor nevertheless ought to
administer his office with republican honesty and frugality. Cato, when governor of Sardinia, appeared in the towns subject to him on foot and attended by a single servant, who carried his coat and sacrificial ladle; and, when he returned home from his Spanish governorship, he sold his war-horse beforehand, because he did not hold himself entitled to charge the state with the expenses of its transport. There is no question that the Roman governors —although certainly but few of them pushed their con scientiousness, like Cato, to the verge of being niggardly and ridiculous —made in many cases a powerful impression on the subjects, more especially on the frivolous and unstable Greeks, by their old-fashioned piety, by the reverential stillness prevailing at their repasts, by their comparatively upright administration of office and of
justice, especially by their proper severity towards the worst bloodsuckers of the provincials —the Roman revenue- farmers and bankers—and in general by the gravity and dignity of their deportment. The provincials found their government comparatively tolerable. They had not been pampered by their Carthaginian stewards and Syracusan masters, and they were soon to find occasion for recalling with gratitude the present rods as compared with the coming scorpions: it is easy to understand how, in later times, the sixth century of the city appeared as the golden era of provincial rule. But it was not practicable for any
30
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chap, xi THE GOVhKWidENT AND THE GOVERNED
31
length of time to be at once republican and king. Playing
the part of governors demoralized the Roman ruling class
with fearful rapidity. Haughtiness and arrogance towards
the provincials were so natural in the circumstances, as scarcely to form matter of reproach against the individual magistrate. But already it was a rare thing — and the rarer, because the government adhered rigidly to the old principle of not paying public officials — that a governor returned with quite clean hands from his province ; it was already remarked upon as something singular that Paullus,
the conqueror of Pydna, did not take money. The bad custom of delivering to the governor " honorary wine " and other "voluntary" gifts seems as old as the provincial constitution itself, and may perhaps have been a legacy
from the Carthaginians ; even Cato in his administration of Sardinia in 556 had to content himself with regulating and 198. moderating such contributions. The right of the magistrates,
and of those travelling on the business of the state generally,
to free quarters and free conveyance was already employed as
a pretext for exactions. The more important right of the magistrate to make requisitions of grain in his province— partly for the maintenance of himself and his retinue (in allam), partly for the provisioning of the army in case of
war, or on other special occasions at a fair valuation —was already so scandalously abused, that on the complaint of
the Spaniards the senate in 583 found it necessary to 171. withdraw from the governors the right of fixing the price of
the supplies for either purpose (ii. 393). Requisitions had begun to be made on the subjects even for the popular festivals in Rome; the unmeasured vexatious demands made on the Italian as well as extra-Italian communities
by the aedile Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, for the festival which he had to provide, induced the senate officially to interfere against them (572). The liberties 182. which Roman magistrates at the close of this period
Control over the governors.
allowed themselves to take not only with the unhappy subjects, but even with the dependent free-states and kingdoms, are illustrated by the raids of Gaius Volso in Asia Minor 471), and above all the scandalous proceedings in Greece during the war with Perseus
500/).
The government had no right to be surprised at such
things, for provided no serious check on the excesses of this capricious military administration. Judicial control,
true, was not entirely wanting. Although, according to the universal but more than questionable rule of allowing no complaint to be brought against commander-in-chief during his term of office 319), the Roman governor could ordinarily be called to account only after the mischief had been done, yet he was amenable both to criminal and to civil prosecution. In order to the institution of the former, tribune of the people virtue of the judicial power pertaining to him had to take the case in hand and bring to the bar of the people the civil action was remitted by the senator who administered the corresponding praetorship to jury appointed, according to the constitution of the tribunal in those times, from the ranks of the senate. In both cases, therefore, the control lay in the hands of the ruling class, and, although the latter was still sufficiently upright and honourable not absolutely to set aside well-founded complaints, and the senate even in various instances, at the call of those aggrieved, condescended itself to order the institution of civil process, yet the complaints of poor men and foreigners against powerful members of the ruling aristocracy— submitted to judges and jurymen far remote from the scene and, not involved in the like guilt, at least belonging to the same order as the accused—could from the first only reckon on success in the event of the wrong being clear and crying; and to complain in vain was
32
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almost certain destruction. The aggrieved no doubt found a sort of support in the hereditary relations of clientship, which the subject cities and provinces entered into with their conquerors and other Romans brought into close contact with them. The Spanish governors felt that no one could with impunity maltreat clients of Cato ; and the circumstance that the representatives of the three nations conquered by Paullus —the Spaniards, Ligurians, and Macedonians —would not forgo the privilege of carrying his bier to the funeral pile, was the noblest dirge in honour of that noble man. But not only did this special protection give the Greeks opportunity to display in Rome all their talent for abasing themselves in presence of their masters, and to demoralize even those masters by their ready servility — the decrees of the Syracusans in honour of
Marcellus, after he had destroyed and plundered their city and they had complained of his conduct in these respects to the senate in vain, form one of the most scandalous pages in the far from honourable annals of Syracuse — but, in connection with the already dangerous family -politics, this patronage on the part of great houses had also its politically perilous side. In this way the result perhaps was that the Roman magistrates in some degree feared the gods and the senate, and for the most part were moderate in their plundering ; but they plundered withal, and did so with impunity, if they but observed such moderation. The mischievous rule became established, that in the case of minor exactions and moderate violence the Roman magistrate acted in some measure within his sphere and was in law exempt from punishment, so that those who were aggrieved had to keep silence ; and from this rule succeeding ages did not fail to draw the fatal consequences.
Nevertheless, even though the tribunals had been as strict as they were lax, the liability to a judicial reckoning could only check the worst evils. The true security for a
vol. ill 68
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Supervision good administration lay in a strict and uniform supervision
of the senate over the provinces and their governors.
by the supreme administrative authority : and this the senate utterly failed to provide. It was in this respect that the laxity and helplessness of the collegiate government became earliest apparent. By right the governors ought to have been subjected to an oversight far more strict and more special than had sufficed for the administration of Italian municipal affairs; and now, when the empire embraced great transmarine territories, the arrangements, through which the government preserved to itself the supervision of
the whole, ought to have undergone a corresponding expansion. In both respects the reverse was the case. The governors ruled virtually as sovereign ; and the most important of the institutions serving for the latter purpose, the census of the empire, was extended to Sicily alone, not to any of the provinces subsequently acquired. Thir emancipation of the supreme administrative officials frorc the central authority was more than hazardous. The Roman governor, placed at the head of the armies of the state, and in possession of considerable financial resources , subject to but a lax judicial control, and practically inde pendent of the supreme administration ; and impelled bj a sort of necessity to separate the interest of himself and of the people whom he governed from that of the Roma"v community and to treat them as conflicting, far more resembled a Persian satrap than one of the commissioners of the Roman senate at the time of the Samnite wars. The man, moreover, who had just conducted a legalizec military tyranny abroad, could with difficulty find his wa; back to the common civic level, which distinguished between those who commanded and those who obeyed, but not between masters and slaves. Even the government felt that their two fundamental principles —equality within the aristocracy, and the subordination of the power of the magistrates to the senatorial college—began in this instance
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
to give way in their hands. The aversion of the govern ment to the acquisition of new provinces and to the whole provincial system ; the institution of the provincial quaestorships, which were intended to take at least the financial power out of the hands of the governors ; and the abolition of the arrangement — in itself so judicious — for a longer tenure of such offices 392), very clearly evince the anxiety felt the more far-seeing of the Roman states men as to the fruits of the seed thus sown. But diagnosis
not cure. The internal government of the nobility con tinued to follow the direction once given to it; and the decay of the administration and of the financial system —paving the way for future revolutions and usurpations —steadily pursued its course, not unnoticed, yet unchecked.
If the new nobility was less sharply defined than the The
old aristocracy of the clans, and the encroachment on oppos ** the other burgesses as respected the joint enjoyment of
political rights was the one case de Jure, in the other
only de facto, the second form of inferiority was for that
very reason worse to bear and worse to throw off than the first. Attempts to throw off were, as matter of course, not wanting. The opposition rested on the support of the public assembly, as the nobility did on the senate in order to understand the opposition, we must first describe the Roman burgess-body during this period as regards its spirit and its position in the commonwealth.
Whatever could be demanded of an assembly ofCharacter burgesses like the Roman, which was not the moving ^fo*e spring, but the firm foundation, of the whole machinery — burgess-
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sure perception of the common good, sagacious deference towards the right leader, steadfast spirit in prosperous and evil days, and, above all, the capacity of sacrificing the individual for the general welfare and the comfort of the present for the advantage of the future—all
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these qualities the Roman community exhibited in so high a degree that, when we look to its conduct as a whole, all censure is lost in reverent admiration. Even now good sense and discretion still thoroughly predominated. The whole conduct of the burgesses with reference to the government as well as to the opposition shows quite clearly that the same mighty patriotism before which even the genius of Hannibal had to quit the field prevailed also in the Roman comitia. No doubt they often erred ; but their errors originated not in the mischievous impulses of a rabble, but in the narrow views of burgesses and farmers. The machinery, however, by means of which the burgesses intervened in the course of public affairs became certainly more and more unwieldy, and the circumstances in which they were placed through their own great deeds far outgrew their power to deal with them. We have already stated, that in the course of this epoch most of the former com munities of passive burgesses, as well as a considerable number of newly established colonies, received the full Roman franchise (pp. 23, 26). At the close of this period the Roman burgess-body, in a tolerably compact mass,
filled Latium in its widest sense, Sabina, and a part of Campania, so that it reached on the west coast northward to Caere and southward to Cumae ; within this district there were only a few cities not included in such as Tibur, Praeneste, Signia, Norba, and Ferentinum. To this fell to be added the maritime colonies on the coasts of Italy which uniformly possessed the full Roman franchise, the Picenian and Trans-Apennine colonies of the most recent times, to which the franchise must have been con ceded 26), and very considerable number of Roman burgesses, who, without forming separate communities in strict sense, were scattered throughout Italy in market-villages and hamlets (Jora tt conciliabula). To some extent the unwieldiness of civic community so constituted was
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remedied, for the purposes of justice ' and of administra tion, by the deputy judges previously mentioned (ii. 49) . , and already perhaps the maritime (ii. 48) and the newPi- cenian and Trans-Apennine colonies exhibited at least the first lineaments of the system under which afterwards smaller urban communities were organized within the great
city-commonwealth of Rome. But in all political questions the primary assembly in the Roman Forum remained alone entitled to act; and it is obvious at a glance, that this assembly was no longer, in its composition or in its collec tive action, what it had been when all the persons entitled to vote could exercise their privilege as citizens by leaving their farms in the morning and returning home the same evening. Moreover the government —whether from want of judgment, from negligence, or from any evil design, we
cannot tell — no longer as formerly enrolled the com munities admitted to the franchise after 513 in newly 241 instituted election-districts, but included them along with others in the old ; so that gradually each tribe came to be composed of different townships scattered over the whole Roman territory. Election-districts such as these, contain
ing on an average 8000 —the urban naturally having more,
the rural fewer—persons entitled to vote, without local connection or inward unity, no longer admitted of any definite leading or of any satisfactory previous deliberation ; disadvantages which must have been the more felt, since
the voting itself was not preceded by any free debate. Moreover, while the burgesses had quite sufficient capacity
1 In Cato's treatise on husbandry, which, as is well known, primarily relates to an estate in the district of Venafrum, the judicial discussion of such processes as might arise is referred to Rome only as respects one definite case ; namely, that in which the landlord leases the winter pasture to the owner of a flock of sheep, and thus has to deal with a lessee who, as a rule, is not domiciled in the district (c 149). It may be inferred from this, that in ordinary cases, where the contract was with a person domiciled in the district, such processes as might spring out of it were even in Cato's time decided not at Rome, but before the local judges.
37
cityraibie
^ length the rabble of clients assumed a position, formally of equality and often even, practically, of superi ority, alongside of the class of independent burgesses. The institutions out of which it sprang were of great antiquity. From time immemorial the Roman of quality exercised a sort of government over his freedmen and dependents, and was consulted by them in all their more important affairs ;
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book ill
to discern their communal interests, it was foolish and utterly ridiculous to leave the decision of the highest and most difficult questions which the power that ruled the world had to solve to a well-disposed but fortuitous con course of Italian farmers, and to allow the nomination of generals and the conclusion of treaties of state to be finally judged of by people who understood neither the grounds nor the consequences of their decrees. In all matters transcending mere communal affairs the Roman primary assemblies accordingly played a childish and even silly part. As a rule, the people stood and gave assent to all proposals; and, when in exceptional instances they of their own impulse refused assent, as on occasion of the
300. declaration of war against Macedonia in 554 (ii. 419), the policy of the market-place certainly made a pitiful opposi tion — and with a pitiful issue — to the policy of the state,
38
a client, for instance, was careful not to give his children in marriage without having obtained the consent of his patron, and very often the latter directly arranged the match. But as the aristocracy became converted into a special ruling class concentrating in its hands not only power but also wealth, the clients became parasites and beggars ; and the new adherents of the rich undermined outwardly and inwardly the burgess class. The aristocracy not only tolerated this sort of clientship, but worked it financially and politically for their own advantage. Thus, for
instance, the old penny collections, which hitherto had taken place chiefly for religious purposes and at the burial
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
of men of merit, were now employed by lords of high standing—for the first time by Lucius Scipio, in 568, on 188 occasion of a popular festival which he had in contempla tion—for the purpose of levying on extraordinary occasions
a contribution from the public. Presents were specially placed under legal restriction (in 550), because the senators 204. began under that name to take regular tribute from their clients. But the retinue of clients was above all service
able to the ruling class as a means of commanding the comitia ; and the issue of the elections shows clearly how
the dependent rabble already at this epoch competed with the independent middle class.
The very rapid increase of the rabble in the capital particularly, which is thus presupposed, is also demon strable otherwise. The increasing number and importance of the freedmen are shown by the very serious discussions that arose in the previous century 396), and were continued during the present, as to their right to vote in the public assemblies, and by the remarkable resolution, adopted by the senate during the Hannibalic war, to admit honourable freedwomen to participation in the public collections, and to grant to the legitimate children of manumitted fathers the insignia hitherto belonging only to the children of the free-born The majority of the Hellenes and Orientals who settled in Rome were probably little better than the freedmen, for national ser vility clung as indelibly to the former as legal servility to the latter.
But not only did these natural causes co-operate to Systematic produce metropolitan rabble neither the nobility nor the ^f^p Ion
powerfully
39
moreover, can be acquitted from the reproach multitude. of having systematically nursed its growth, and of having undermined, so far as in them lay, the old public spirit by
flattery of the people and things still worse. The electors
as body were still too respectable to admit of direct
demagogues,
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electoral corruption showing itself on a gri. it scale; but the favour of those entitled to vote was indirectly courted by methods far from commendable. The old obligation of the magistrates, particularly of the aediles, to see that corn could be procured at a moderate price and to superintend the games, began to degenerate into the state of things which at length gave rise to the horrible cry of the citj populace under the Empire, " Bread for nothing and games for ever ! " Large supplies of grain, cither placed by the provincial governors at the disposal of the Roman maricet officials, or delivered at Rome free of cost by the provinces themselves for the purpose of procuring favour with par ticular Roman magistrates, enabled the aediles, from the middle of the sixth century, to furnish grain to the population of the capital at very low prices. " It was no wonder," Cato considered, " that the burgesses no longer listened to good advice—the belly forsooth had no ears. "
Popular amusements increased to an alarming extent. For five hundred years the community had been content with one festival in the year, and with one circus. The first Roman demagogue by profession, Gaius Flaminius,
40
220, added a second festival and a second circus (534) ;* and by these institutions —the tendency of which is sufficiently indicated by the very name of the new festival, "the plebeian games" —he probably purchased the permission to give battle at the Trasimene lake. When the path was once opened, the evil made rapid progress. The festival in honour of Ceres, the goddess who protected the plebeian order 355), must have been but little, at all, later than the plebeian games. On the suggestion of the Sibylline
The laying out of the circus attested. Respecting the origin of the plebeian games there no ancient tradition (for what said by the Pseudo-Asconius, p. 143, Orell. not such) but seeing that they were celebrated in the Flaminian circus (Val. Max. 7, 4), and first certainly
216. occur in 538, four years after was built 'Liv. jadii. 30), what we have slated above sufficiently proved.
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and Marcian prophecies, moreover, a fourth festival was
added in 542 in honour of Apollo, and a fifth in 550 in 212. 204. honour of the " Great Mother " recently transplanted from
Phrygia to Rome. These were the severe years of the
Hannibalic war—on the first celebration of the games of Apollo the burgesses were summoned from the circus itself to arms ; the superstitious fear peculiar to Italy was feverishly excited, and persons were not wanting who took advantage
of the opportunity to circulate Sibylline and prophetic oracles and to recommend themselves to the multitude through their contents and advocacy : we can scarcely blame the government, which was obliged to call for so enormous sacrifices from the burgesses, for yielding in such matters. But what was once conceded had to be con tinued; indeed, even in more peaceful times (581) there 178- was added another festival, although of minor importance —the games in honour of Flora. The cost of these new festal amusements was defrayed by the magistrates entrusted
with the providing of the respective festivals from their own means : thus the curule aediles had, over and above the old national festival, those of the Mother of the Gods and of Flora ; the plebeian aediles had the plebeian festival and that of Ceres, and the urban praetor the Apollinarian games. Those who sanctioned the new festivals perhaps excused themselves in their own eyes by the reflection that they were not at any rate a burden on the public purse ; but it would have been in reality far less injurious to burden the public budget with a number of useless expenses, than to allow the providing of an amusement for the people to become practically a qualification for holding the highest office in the state. The future candidates for the consulship soon entered into a mutual rivalry in their
on these games, which incredibly increased their cost ; and, as may well be conceived, it did no harm if the consul expectant gave, over and above this as it were
expenditure
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THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book 11
legal contribution, a voluntary "performance" (munus), a gladiatorial show at his own expense for the public benefit. The splendour of the games became gradually the standard by which the electors measured the fitness of the candidates for the consulship. The nobility had, in truth, to pay dear for their honours —a gladiatorial show on a respectable scale cost 720,000 sesterces (^7200) — but they paid willingly, since by this means they absolutely precluded men who were not wealthy from a political career.
Corruption, however, was not restricted to the Forum ; it was transferred even to the camp. The old burgess militia had reckoned themselves fortunate when they brought home a compensation for the toil of war, and, in the event of success, a trifling gift as a memorial of victory. The new generals, with Scipio Africanus at their head,
lavishly scattered amongst their troops the money of Rome as well as the proceeds of the spoil : it was on this point, that Cato quarrelled with Scipio during the last campaigns against Hannibal in Africa. The veterans from the second Macedonian war and that waged in Asia Minor already returned home throughout as wealthy men : even the better class began to commend a general, who did not appropriate the gifts of the provincials and the gains of war entirely to himself and his immediate followers, and from whose camp not a few men returned with gold, and many with silver, in their pockets: men began to forget that the moveable spoil was the property of the state.
When Lucius Paullus again dealt with it in the old mode, his own soldiers, especially the volunteers who had been allured in numbers by the prospect of rich plunder, fell little short of refusing to the victor of Pydna by popular decree the honour of a triumph —an honour which they already threw away on every one who had subjugated three Ligurian villages.
How much the military discipline and the martial spirit
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of the burgesses suffered from this conversion of war into a Decline of traffic in plunder, may be traced in the campaigns against ^jue Perseus; and the spread of cowardice was manifested in
a way almost scandalous during the insignificant Istrian
war (in 576). On occasion of a trifling skirmish magnified 178. by rumour to gigantic dimensions, the land army and the naval force of the Romans, and even the Italians, ran off homeward, and Cato found it necessary to address a special reproof to his countrymen for their cowardice. In this too
the youth of quality took precedence. Already during the Hannibalic war (545) the censors found occasion to visit 209. with severe penalties the remissness of those who were liable to military service under the equestrian census. Towards the close of this period (574? ) a decree of the 180. people prescribed evidence of ten years' service as a qualification for holding any public magistracy, with a view to compel the sons of the nobility to enter the army.
But perhaps nothing so clearly evinces the decay of TWe- genuine pride and genuine honour in high and low alike un ^' as the hunting after insignia and titles, which appeared
under different forms of expression, but with substantial
identity of character, among all ranks and classes. So
urgent was the demand for the honour of a triumph that
there was difficulty in upholding the old rule, which accorded a triumph only to the ordinary supreme magis
trate who augmented the power of the commonwealth in
open battle, and thereby, it is true, not unfrequently excluded from that honour the very authors of the most important successes. There was a necessity for acqui
escence, while those generals, who had in vain solicited, or
had no prospect of attaining, a triumph from the senate
or the burgesses, marched in triumph on their own account
at least to the Alban Mount (first in 523). No combat 281. with a Ligurian or Corsican horde was too insignificant to
be made a pretext for demanding a triumph. In order to
43
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book III
put an end to the trade of peaceful triumphators, such as 180. were the consuls of 574, the granting of a triumph was made to depend on the producing proof of a pitched battle
which had cost the lives of at least 5000 of the enemy; but this proof was frequently evaded by false bulletins —
already in houses of quality many an enemy's armour might be seen to glitter, which had by no means come thither from the field of battle. While formerly the commander- in-chief of the one year had reckoned it an honour to serve next year on the staff of his successor, the fact that the consular Cato took service as a military tribune under
194. Tiberius Sempronius Longus (560) and Manius Glabrio 191. (563; 457), was now regarded as demonstration against the new-fashioned arrogance. Formerly the thanks
of the community once for all had sufficed for service rendered to the state now every meritorious act seemed to demand permanent distinction. Already Gaius
MO. Duilius, the victor of Mylae (494), had gained an exceptional permission that, when he walked in the evening through the streets of the capital, he should be preceded by torch-bearer and piper. Statues and monuments, very often erected at the expense of the person whom they purported to honour, became so common, that was ironically pronounced distinction to have none. But such merely personal honours did not long suffice. A custom came into vogue, which the victor and his descendants derived permanent surname from the victories they had won— custom mainly established by the victor of Zama who got himself designated as the hero of Africa, his brother as the hero of Asia, and his cousin as the hero of Spain. 1 The example set by the higher was
1L 483. The first certain instance of such a surname that of Manius 263. Valerius Maximus, consul in 491, who, as conqueror of Messana, assumed S35. the name Messalla (ii. 170) that the consul of 419 was, in similar manner,
called Calenus, an error. The presence of Maximus as a surname in the Valerian 348) and Fabian 397) clans not quite analogous.
44
(i. is
:
ii. a
(i.
by
is
a
a
1
a
is
aa a
:
it
a
chap. XI THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
followed by the humbler classes. When the ruling order did not disdain to settle the funeral arrangements for different ranks and to decree to the man who had been censor a purple winding-sheet, it could not complain of the freedmen for desiring that their sons at any rate might be decorated with the much-envied purple border. The robe, the ring, and the amulet-case distinguished not only the burgess and the burgess's wife from the foreigner and the slave, but also the person who was free-born from one who had been a slave, the son of free-born, from the son of manumitted, parents, the son of the knight and the senator from the common burgess, the descendant of a curule house from the common senator —and this
community where all that was good and great was the work of civil equality
The dissension in the community was reflected in the ranks of the opposition. Resting on the support of the farmers, the patriots raised loud cry for reform resting on the support of the mob in the capital, demagogism began its work.
Although the two tendencies do not admit of being wholly separated but in various respects go hand hand, will be necessary to consider them apart.
The party ot reform emerges, as were, personified in The pony
Marcus Porcius Cato (520-605). Cato, the last statesman
of note belonging to that earlier system which restricted its 23414a. ideas to Italy and was averse to universal empire, was for
that reason accounted after times the model of genuine
Roman of the antique stamp he may with greater justice be regarded as the representative of the opposition of the Roman middle class to the new Hellenico-cosmopolite nobility. Brought up at the plough, he was induced to enter on political career the owner of neighbouring estate, one of the few nobl:s who kept aloof from the tendencies of the age, Lucius Valerius Flaccus. That upright patrician deemed the rough Sabine farmer the
45
<£^orm'
a
a
(p. 5)
in
by a ;
it
a;
in
it
1
in a
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book ill
proper man to stem the current of the times ; and he was not deceived in his estimate. Beneath the aegis of Flaccus, and after the good old fashion serving his fellow-citizens and the commonwealth in counsel and action, Cato fought his way up to the consulate and a triumph, and even to the censorship. Having in his seventeenth year entered the burgess-army, he had passed through the whole Hannibalic war from the battle on the Trasimene lake to that of Zama; had served under Marcellus and Fabius, under Nero and Scipio; and at Tarentum and Sena, in Africa, Sardinia, Spain, and Macedonia, had shown himself capable as a soldier, a staff-officer, and a general. He was the same in the Forum, as in the battle-field. His prompt and fearless utterance, his rough but pungent rustic wit, his knowledge of Roman law and Roman affairs, his incredible activity and his iron frame, first brought him into notice in the neighbouring towns ; and, when at length he made his appearance on the greater arena of the Forum and the senate-house in the capital, constituted him the most influential advocate and political orator of his time. He took up the key-note first struck by Manius Curius, his ideal among Roman statesmen 394) throughout his long life he made his task honestly, to the best of his judgment, to assail on all hands the prevailing declension and even in his eighty-fifth year he battled in the Forum with the new spirit of the times. He was anything but comely — he had green eyes, his enemies alleged, and red hair—and he was not great man, still less far-seeing statesman. Thoroughly narrow in his political and moral views, and having the ideal of the good old times always before his eyes and on his lips, he cherished an obstinate contempt for everything new. Deeming himself by virtue of his own austere life entitled to manifest an unrelenting severity and harshness towards everything and everybody upright and honourable, but without glimpse of any duty
46
a
(i. :
;;
a
a
it
CHAP. XI THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
lying beyond the sphere of police order and of mercantile, integrity ; an enemy to all villany and vulgarity as well as
to all refinement and geniality, and above all things the foe
of his foes ; he never made an attempt to stop evils at theirj source, but waged war throughout life against symptoms,
and especially against persons. The ruling lords, no doubt, looked down with a lofty disdain on the ignoble growler, and believed, not without reason, that they were
far superior ; but fashionable corruption in and out of the senate secretly trembled in the presence of the old censor
of morals with his proud republican bearing, of the scar- covered veteran from the Hannibalic war, and of the highly influential senator and the idol of the Roman farmers.
He publicly laid before his noble colleagues, one after another, his list of their sins ; certainly without being remarkably particular as to the proofs, and certainly also with a peculiar relish in the case of those who had person
ally crossed or provoked him. With equal fearlessness he reproved and publicly scolded the burgesses for every new injustice and every fresh disorder. His vehement attacks provoked numerous enemies, and he lived in declared and irreconcilable hostility with the most powerful aristocratic coteries of the time, particularly the Scipios and Flaminini;
he was publicly accused forty-four times. But the farmers —and it is a significant indication how powerful still in the Roman middle class was the spirit which had enabled them
to survive the day of Cannae —never allowed the unsparing champion of reform to lack the support of their votes. Indeed when in 570 Cato and his like-minded patrician 184. colleague, Lucius Flaccus, solicited the censorship, and announced beforehand that it was their intention when in
that office to undertake a vigorous purification of the burgess-body through all its ranks, the two men so greatly dreaded were elected by the burgesses notwithstanding all the exertions of the nobility ; and the latter were obliged to
47
Police reform.
This warfare directed against individuals, and the various , .
Assign*
k^
'
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book hi
submit, while the great purgation actually took place and erased among others the brother of Africanus from the roll of the equites, and the brother of the deliverer of the Greeks from the roll of the senate.
attempts to repress the spirit of the age by means of justice and of police, however deserving of respect might be the sentiments in which they originated, could only at most stem the current of corruption for a short time ; and, while it is remarkable that Cato was enabled in spite of that current, or rather by means of to play his political part,
equally significant that he was as little successful in getting rid of the leaders of the opposite party as they were in getting rid of him. The processes of count and
instituted by him and by those who shared his views before the burgesses uniformly remained, at least in the cases that were of political importance, quite as ineffectual as the counter-accusations directed against him. Nor was much more effect produced by the police-laws, which were issued at this period in unusual numbers, especially for the restricti n of luxury and for the introduction of frugal and orderly housekeeping, and some of which have still to be touched on in our view of the national economics.
Far more practical and more useful were the attempts made to counteract the spread of decay indirect means; among which, beyond doubt, the assignations of new farms out of the domain land occupy the first place. These assignations were made in great numbers and of consider- able extent in the period between the first and second war with Carthage, and again from the close of the latter till towards the end of this epoch. The most important of them were the distribution of the Picenian possessions
Gaius Flaminius in 522 229); the foundation of eight
48
reckoning
232.
184. new maritime colonies in 560 365) and above all the
(ii. ;
it,
by
it is
(ii.
by
a
Chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
comprehensive colonization of the district between the Apennines and the Po by the establishment of the Latin colonies of Placentia, Cremona (ii. 229), Bononia (ii. 374),
and Aquileia 372), and of the burgess-colonies, Potentia, Pisaurum, Mutina, Parma, and Luna 374) in the years
536 and 565-577. By far the greater part of these highly 218. beneficial foundations may be ascribed to the reforming "
party. Cato and those who shared his opinions demanded such measures, pointing, on the one hand, to the devasta tion of Italy by the Hannibalic war and the alarming diminution of the farms and of the free Italian population generally, and, on the other, to the widely extended possessions of the nobles — occupied along with, and similarly to, property of their own — in Cisalpine Gaul, in Samnium, and the Apulian and Bruttian districts and although the rulers of Rome did not probably comply with these demands to the extent to which they might
and should have complied with them, yet they did not remain deaf to the warning voice of so judicious man.
Of kindred character was the proposal, which Cato Reformi
49
made in the senate, to remedy the decline of the burgess- cavalry the institution of four hundred new equestrian stalls 8). The exchequer cannot have wanted means for the purpose; but the proposal appears to have been thwarted by the exclusive spirit of the nobility and their endeavour to remove from the burgess-cavalry those who were troopers merely and not knights. On the other hand, the serious emergencies of the war, which even induced the Roman government to make an attempt—fortunately un successful—to recruit their armies after the Oriental fashion from the slave-market 298, 335), compelled them to modify the qualifications hitherto required for service in the burgess-army, viz. minimum census of 1,000 asses (^43), and free birth. Apart from the fact that they took up for
VOL hi 60
miiitair service,
a
(ii.
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(p. by
a
a
in
(ii.
;
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THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book ill
service in the fleet the persons of free birth rated between 4000 asses (j£ij) and 1500 asses (£6) and all the freed- men, the minimum census for the legionary was reduced to 4000 asses (^17); and, in case of need, both those who were bound to serve in the fleet and the free-born rated between 1500 asses {£(>) and 375 asses (£1 : 10s. ) were enrolled in the burgess-infantry. These innovations, which belong presumably to the end of the preceding or beginning of the present epoch, doubtless did not originate in party efforts any more than did the Servian military reform ; but they gave a material impulse to the democratic party, in so
far as those who bore civic burdens necessarily claimed and eventually obtained equalization of civic rights. The poor and the freedmen began to be of some importance in the commonwealth from the time when they served it; and chiefly from this cause arose one of the most important constitutional changes of this epoch—the remodelling of
the comitia anturiata, which most probably took place in the same year in which the war concerning Sicily terminated
241. (5I3)-
So
Reform of the centuries.
According to the order ofvoting hitherto followed in the centuriate comitia, although the freeholders were no longer—as down to the reform of Appius Claudius (L 396) they had been—the sole voters, the wealthy had the pre
The equites, or in other words the patricio- plebeian nobility, voted first, then those of the highest rating, or in other words those who had exhibited to the censor an estate of at least 100,000 asses (. £420) ;1 and
1 As to the original rates of the Roman census it is difficult to lay down anything definite. Afterwards, as is well known, 100,000 asses was re garded as the minimum census of the first class ; to which the census of the other four classes stood in the (at least approximate) ratio of \ , \, \, \. But these rates are understood already by Polybius, as by all later authors, to refer to the light as (fo of the denarius), and apparently this view must be adhered to, although in reference to the Voconian law the same sums are reckoned as heavy asses (J of the denarius: Geschichte des Rim.
ponderance.
SIS. Miintwtsens, p. 30a). But Appius Claudius, who first in 44a expressed the
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
51
these two divisions, when they kept together, had decided every vote. The suffrage of those assessed under the four following classes had been of doubtful weight ; that of those whose valuation remained below the standard of the lowest class, 11,000 asses (£4$), had been essentially illusory. According to the new arrangement the right of priority in voting was withdrawn from the equites, although they retained their separate divisions, and it was transferred to a voting division chosen from the first class by lot. The importance of that aristocratic right of prior voting cannot be estimated too highly, especially at an epoch in which practically the influence of the nobility on the burgesses at large was constantly on the increase. Even the patrician order proper were still at this epoch powerful enough to fill the second consulship and the second censorship, which
stood open in law alike to patricians and plebeians, solely
with men of their own body, the former up to the close of
this period (till 582), the latter even for a generation longer 172. (till 623); and in fact, at the most perilous moment 181. which the Roman republic ever experienced—in the crisis
after the battle of Cannae —they cancelled the quite legally conducted election of the officer who was in all respects
the ablest — the plebeian Marcellus — to the consulship
census-rates in money Instead of the possession of land 396), cannot in
this have made use of the light as, which only emerged in 485 (ii. 87). 269. Either therefore he expressed the same amounts in heavy asses, and these
were at the reduction of the coinage converted into light or he proposed
the later figures, and these remained the same notwithstanding the reduction or the coinage, which in this case would have involved a lowering of the class-rates by more than the half. Grave doubts may be raised in opposition to either hypothesis but the former appears the
more credible, for so exorbitant an advance in democratic development
not probable either for the end of the fifth century or as an incidental consequence of a mere administrative measure, and besides would scarce
have disappeared wholly from tradition. 100,000 light asses, or 40,000 sesterces, may, moreover, be reasonably regarded as the equivalent of the original Roman full hide of perhaps 20 jugera 123) so that, accord
ing to this view, the rates of the census as a whole have changed merely
in expression, and not in value.
(i.
;
it
; (i.
is
;
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book ill
vacated by the death of the patrician Paullus, solely on account of his plebeianism. At the same time it is a significant token of the nature even of this reform that the right of precedence in voting was withdrawn only from the nobility, not from those of the highest rating; the right of prior voting withdrawn from the equestrian centuries passed not to a division chosen incidentally by lot from the whole burgesses, but exclusively to the first class. This as well as the five grades generally remained as they were ; only the lower limit was prob ably shifted in such a way that the minimum census was, for the right of voting in the centuries as for service in the legion, reduced from 1 1,000 to 4000 asses. Besides,
the formal retention of the earlier rates, while there was a general increase in the amount of men's means, involved of itself in some measure an extension of the suffrage in a democratic sense. The total number of the divisions remained likewise unchanged ; but, while hitherto, as we have said, the 18 equestrian centuries and the 80 of the first class had, standing by themselves, the majority in the 193 voting centuries, in the reformed arrangement the votes of the first class were reduced to 70, with the result that under all circumstances at least the second grade came to vote. Still more important, and indeed the real
central element of the reform, was the connection into which the new voting divisions were brought with the tribal arrange ment. Formerly the centuries originated from the tribes on the footing, that whoever belonged to a tribe had to be enrolled by the censor in one of the centuries. From the time that the non-freehold burgesses had been enrolled in the tribes, they too came thus into the centuries, and, while they were restricted in the comitia tributa to the four urban divisions, they had in the comitia centuriata formally the same right with the freehold burgesses, although probably the censorial arbitrary prerogative intervened in the com
5*
,
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
53
position of the centuries, and granted to the burgesses enrolled in the rural tribes the preponderance also in the centuriate assembly. This preponderance was established by the reformed arrangement on the legal footing, that of the 70 centuries of the first class, two were assigned to each tribe and, accordingly, the non-freehold burgesses obtained only eight of them ; in a similar way the preponderance
must have been conceded also in the four other grades to
the freehold burgesses. In a like spirit the previous equal ization of the freedmen with the free-born in the right of voting was set aside at this time, and even the freehold freedmen were assigned to the four urban tribes. This
was done in the year 534 by one of the most notable men MO, of the party of reform, the censor Gaius Flaminius, and was
then repeated and more stringently enforced fifty years
later (585) by the censor Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, to. the father of the two authors of the Roman revolution.
This reform of the centuries, which perhaps in its totality proceeded likewise from Flaminius, was the first important constitutional change which the new opposition wrung from
the nobility, the first victory of the democracy proper.
The pith of it consists partly in the restriction of the censorial arbitrary rule, partly in the restriction of the in
fluence of the nobility on the one hand, and of the non- freeholders and the freedmen on the other, and so in the remodelling of the centuriate comitia according to the principle which already held good for the comitia of the tribes; a course which commended itself by the circumstance that elections, projects of law, criminal impeachments, and
all affairs requiring the co-operation of the were brought throughout to the comitia of the tribes and the more unwieldy centuries were but seldom
called together, except where it was constitutionally necessary or at least usual, in order to elect the censors, consuls, and praetors, and in order to resolve upon an aggressive war.
generally burgesses,
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book III
Thus this reform did not introduce a new principle into the constitution, but only brought into general application the
54
that had long regulated the working of the practically more frequent and more important form of the burgess-assemblies. Its democratic, but by no means demagogic, tendency is clearly apparent in the position which it took up towards the proper supports of every really revolutionary party, the proletariate and the freedmen. For that reason the practical significance of this alteration in the order of voting regulating the primary assemblies must not be estimated too highly. The new law of election did not prevent, and perhaps did not even materially impede, the contemporary formation of a new politically privileged order. It is certainly not owing to the mere imperfection of tradition, defective as it un doubtedly that we are nowhere able to point to practical influence exercised by this much-discussed reform on the course of political affairs. An intimate connection, we may add, subsisted between this reform, and the already- mentioned abolition of the Roman burgess-communities sine suffragio, which were gradually merged in the com munity of full burgesses. The levelling spirit of the party of progress suggested the abolition of distinctions within the middle class, while the chasm between
and non-burgesses was at the same time widened and deepened.
Reviewing what the reform party of this age aimed at and obtained, we find that undoubtedly exerted itself with patriotism and energy to check, and to certain ex tent succeeded in checking, the spread of decay—more especially the falling off of the farmer class and the relaxa tion of the old strict and frugal habits—as well as the preponderating political influence of the new nobility. But we fail to discover any higher political aim. The dis content of the multitude and the moral indignation of the
principle
Result* of ■u'reform
burgesses
a
it
is,
a
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
55
better classes found doubtless in this opposition their appropriate and powerful expression ; but we do not find either a clear insight into the sources of the evil, or any definite and comprehensive plan of remedying it A certain want of thought pervades all these efforts otherwise so deserving of honour, and the purely defensive attitude of the defenders forebodes little good for the sequel. Whether the disease could be remedied at all by human skill, remains fairly open to question ; the Roman reformers of this period seem to have been good citizens rather than good statesmen, and to have conducted the great struggle between the old civism and the new cosmopolitanism on their part after a somewhat inadequate and narrow-minded
fashion.
But, as this period witnessed the rise of a rabble by the Demagog-
'
side of the burgesses, so it witnessed also the emergence of a demagogism that flattered the populace alongside of the respectable and useful party of opposition. Cato was already acquainted with men who made a trade of de magogism ; who had a morbid propensity for speechifying, as others had for drinking or for sleeping; who hired listeners, if they could find no willing audience otherwise ; and whom people heard as they heard the market-crier, without listening to their words or, in the event of needing help, entrusting themselves to their hands. In his caustic fashion the old man describes these fops formed after the model of the Greek talkers of the agora, dealing in jests and witticisms, singing and dancing, ready for anything; such an one was, in his opinion, good for nothing but to exhibit himself as harlequin in a procession and to bandy
talk with the public —he would sell his talk or his silence for a bit of bread. In reality these demagogues were the worst enemies of reform. While the reformers insisted above all things and in every direction on moral amend ment, demagogism preferred to insist on the limitation of
Abolition utonhtaT
the powers of the government and the extension of those of the burgesses.
Under the former head the most important innovation was tne Pract'cal abolition of the dictatorship. The crisis occasioned by Quintus Fabius and his popular opponents
the com-
56
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book hi
817. in 537 (ii. 284) gave the death-blow to this all-along un popular institution. Although the government once after-
214. wards, in 538, under the immediate impression produced by the battle of Cannae, nominated a dictator invested with active command, it could not again venture to do so in more peaceful times. On several occasions subsequently
202. (the last in 552), sometimes after a previous indication by the burgesses of the person to be nominated, a dictator was appointed for urban business ; but the office, without being formally abolished, fell practically into desuetude. Through its abeyance the Roman constitutional system,
so artificially constructed, lost a corrective which was very desirable with reference to its peculiar feature of collegiate magistrates 325); and the government, which was vested with the sole power of creating dictatorship or other words of suspending the consuls, and ordinarily
also the person who was to be nominated as dictator, lost one of its most important instruments. Its place was but very imperfectly supplied by the power — which the senate thenceforth claimed — of conferring in extraordinary emergencies, particularly on the sudden outbreak of revolt or war, quasi -dictatorial power on the supreme magistrates for the time being, by instructing them "to take measures for the safety of the commonwealth at their discretion," and thus creating state of things similar to the modern martial law.
designated
Along with this change the formal powers of the people in tne nomination of magistrates as well as in questions of nnmltjr. government, administration, and finance, received hazard-
Election of
priestsby . . . r 11 • *
a
a .
a
in
a
(i.
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
57
ous extension. The priesthoods —particularly those politi
cally most important, the colleges of men of lore—according
to ancient custom filled up the vacancies in their own ranks,
and nominated also their own presidents, where these corporations had presidents at all; and in fact, for such institutions destined to transmit the knowledge of divine things from generation to generation, the only form of election in keeping with their spirit was cooptation. It
was therefore — although not of great political importance —significant of the incipient disorganization of the re publican arrangements, that at this time (before 542), while 212. election into the colleges themselves was left on its former footing, the designation of the presidents — the curiones
and pontifices — from the ranks of those corporations was transferred from the colleges to the community. In this case, however, with a pious regard for forms that is genuinely Roman, in order to avoid any error, only a minority of the tribes, and therefore not the "people," completed the act of election.
Of greater importance was the growing interference of Interfer- the burgesses in questions as to persons and things be- immunity
longing to the sphere of military administration and external policy. To this head belong the transference of the nomination of the ordinary stafF-officers from the general to the burgesses, which has been already mentioned (p. 1 3) ; the elections of the leaders of the opposition as commanders-in-chief against Hannibal 277, 286); the unconstitutional and irrational decree of the people in 537, which divided the supreme command between the un popular generalissimo and his popular lieutenant who opposed him in the camp as well as at home 284); the tribunician complaint laid before the burgesses, charging
an officer like Marcellus with injudicious and dishonest management of the war (545), which even compelled him to come from the camp to the capital and there demon-
>n war and '
x^^q^
217.
209.
(ii.
(ii.
58
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book i .
strate his military capacity before the public; the still more scandalous attempts to refuse by decree of the burgesses to the victor of Pydna his triumph (p. 42); the investiture — suggested, it is true, by the senate — of a
MO. private man with extraordinary consular authority (544 ;
the dangerous threat of Scipio that, the senate should refuse him the chief command in Africa, he would 205. seek the sanction of the burgesses (549; 352); the attempt of man half crazy with ambition to extort from
the burgesses, against the will of the government, declara
tion of war in every respect unwarranted against the 167. Rhodians (587; 514); and the new constitutional
axiom, that every state-treaty acquired validity only through
the ratification of the people.
Interfer- This joint action of the burgesses in governing and in
community commanding was fraught in high degree with peril.
325)
with the
But still more dangerous was their interference with the finances of the state not only because any attack on the oldest and most important right of the government — the exclusive administration of the public property—struck at the root of the power of the senate, but because the placing of the most important business of this nature — the dis tribution of the public domains — the hands of the primary assemblies of the burgesses necessarily dug the grave of the republic. To allow the primary assembly to decree the transference of public property without limit to its own pocket not only wrong, but the beginning of the end demoralizes the best-disposed citizens, and gives to the proposer power incompatible with free commonwealth. Salutary as was the distribution of the public land, and doubly blameable as was the senate accordingly for omitting to cut off this most dangerous of all weapons of agitation by voluntarily distributing the occupied lands, yet Gaius Flaminius, when he came to
1*8. the burgesses in 522 with the proposal to distribute the
a
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chap, XI THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
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domains of Picenum, undoubtedly injured the common wealth more by the means than he benefited it by the end. Spurius Cassius had doubtless two hundred and fifty years earlier proposed the same thing 361); but the two measures, closely as they coincided in the letter, were yet wholly different, inasmuch as Cassius submitted a matter affecting the community to that community while
was in vigour and self-governing, whereas Flaminius submitted question of state to the primary assembly of a great empire.
Not the party of the government only, but the party of Nullity
reform also, very properly regarded the military, executive, and financial government as the legitimate domain of the senate, and carefully abstained from making full use of, to say nothing of augmenting, the formal power vested in primary assemblies that were inwardly doomed to inevitable dissolution. Never even in the most limited monarchy was
part so completely null assigned to the monarch as was allotted to the sovereign Roman people this was no doubt in more than one respect to be regretted, but was, owing to the existing state of the comitial machine, even in the view of the friends of reform matter of necessity. For this reason Cato and those who shared his views never submitted to the burgesses question, which trenched on government strictly so called; and never, directly or indirectly, by decree of the burgesses extorted from the senate the political or financial measures which they wished, such as the declaration of war against Carthage and the assignations of land. The government of the senate might be bad the primary assemblies could not govern at all. Not that an evil-disposed majority predominated in them on the con trary the counsel of man of standing, the loud call of honour, and the louder call of necessity were still, as rule, listened to in the comitia, and averted the most injurious and disgraceful results. The burgesses, before whom Mar-
^mitta.
a
;
a
;
it
(i.
a
a
:
a
it
a
Disorgani. zation of goTern-
60 THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book hi
cellus pleaded his cause, ignominiously dismissed his accuser, and elected the accused as consul for the following year : they suffered themselves also to be persuaded of the necessity of the war against Philip, terminated the war against Perseus by the election of Paullus, and accorded to the latter his well-deserved triumph. But in order to such elections and such decrees there was needed some special stimulus ; in general the mass having no will of its own followed the first impulse, and folly or accident dictated the decision.
In the state, as in every organism, an organ which no longer discharges its functions is injurious. The nullity of the sovereign assembly of the people involved no small danger. Any minority in the senate might constitutionally appeal to the comitia against the majority. To every in dividual, who possessed the easy art of addressing untutored ears or of merely throwing away money, a path was opened up for his acquiring a position or procuring a decree in his favour, to which the magistrates and the government were formally bound to do homage. Hence sprang those citizen- generals, accustomed to sketch plans of battle on the tables of taverns and to look down on the regular service with compassion by virtue of their inborn genius for strategy : hence those staff-officers, who owed their command to the canvassing intrigues of the capital and, whenever matters looked serious, had at once to get leave of absence en masse ; and hence the battles on the Trasimene lake and at Cannae, and the disgraceful management of the war with Perseus.
At every step the government was thwarted and led astray by those incalculable decrees of the burgesses, and as was to be expected, most of all in the very cases where it was most in the right.
But the weakening of the government and the weakening of the community itself were among the lesser dangers that
from this demagogism. Still more directly the
sprang
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED 61
factious violence of individual ambition pushed itself for ward under the aegis of the constitutional rights of the burgesses. That which formally issued forth as the will of the supreme authority in the state was in reality very often the mere personal pleasure of the mover; and what was to be the fate of a commonwealth in which war and peace, the nomination and deposition of the general and his officers, the public chest and the public property, were dependent on the caprices of the multitude and its accidental leaders ? The thunder-storm had not yet burst ; but the clouds were gathering in denser masses, and occasional peals of thunder were already rolling through the sultry air. It was a cir cumstance, moreover, fraught with double danger, that the tendencies which were apparently most opposite met to gether at their extremes both as regarded ends and as re garded means. Family policy and demagogism carried on a similar and equally dangerous rivalry in patronizing and worshipping the rabble. Gaius Flaminius was regarded by the statesmen of the following generation as the initiator of that course from which proceeded the reforms of the Gracchi and —we may add —the democratico-monarchical revolution that ensued. But Publius Scipio also, although setting the fashion to the nobility in arrogance, title-hunting, and client-making, sought support for his personal and almost dynastic policy of opposition to the senate in the multitude, which he not only charmed by the dazzling effect of his personal qualities, but also bribed by his largesses of grain ; in the legions, whose favour he courted by all means whether right or wrong ; and above all in the body of clients, high and low, that personally adhered to him. Only the dreamy mysticism, on which the charm as well as the weakness of that remarkable man so largely depended, never suffered him to awake at all, or allowed him to awake but imperfectly, out of the belief that he was nothing, and that he desired to be nothing, but the first burgess of Rome.
6a THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book hi
To assert the possibility of a reform would be as rash as to deny it : this much is certain, that a thorough amendment of the state in all its departments was urgently required, and that in no quarter was any serious attempt made to accom plish it Various alterations in details, no doubt, were made on the part of the senate as well as on the part of the popular opposition. The majorities in each were still well disposed, and still frequently, notwithstanding the chasm that separated the parties, joined hands in a common en deavour to effect the removal of the worst evils. But, while they did not stop the evil at its source, it was to little purpose that the better- disposed listened with anxiety to the dull murmur of the swelling flood and worked at dikes and dams. Contenting themselves with palliatives, and failing to apply even these — especially such as were the most important, the improvement of justice, for instance, and the distribution of the domains—in proper season and due measure, helped to prepare evil days for their posterity. By neglect ing to break up the field at the proper time, they allowed weeds even to ripen which they had not sowed. To the later generations who survived the storms of revolution the period after the Hannibalic war appeared the golden age of Rome, and Cato seemed the model of the Roman statesman. It was in reality the lull before the storm and the epoch of political mediocrities, an age like that of the government of Walpole in England ; and no Chatham was found in Rome to infuse fresh energy into the stagnant life of the nation. Wherever we cast our eyes, chinks and rents are yawning in the old building ; we see workmen busy sometimes in filling them up, sometimes in enlarging them ; but we no where perceive any trace of preparations for thoroughly rebuilding or renewing and the question no longer whether, but simply when, the structure will falL During no epoch did the Roman constitution remain formally so stable as in the period from the Sicilian to the
they
it,
is
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
third Macedonian war and for a generation beyond it; but the stability of the constitution was here, as everywhere, not a sign of the health of the state, but a token of incipient sickness and the harbinger of revolution.
63
THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND book in
CHAPTER XII
THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND AND OF CAPITAL
It is in the sixth century of the city that we first find economics. materials for a history of the times exhibiting in some measure the mutual connection of events ; and it is in that
century also that the economic condition of Rome emerges into view more distinctly and clearly. It is at this epoch that the wholesale system, as regards both the cultivation of land and the management of capital, becomes first established under the form, and on the scale, which after wards prevailed; although we cannot exactly discriminate how much of that system is traceable to earlier precedent, how much to an imitation of the methods of husbandry and
of speculation among peoples that were earlier civilized, especially the Phoenicians, and how much to the increasing mass of capital and the growth of intelligence in the nation. A summary outline of these economic relations will conduce to a more accurate understanding of the internal history of Rome. l
Roman
Roman husbandry
applied itself either to the farming
1 In order to gain a correct picture of ancient Italy, it is necessary for us to bear in mind the great changes which have been produced there by modern cultivation. Of the cerealia, ryewas not cultivated in antiquity ; and the Romans of the empire were astonished to find that oats, with which they were well acquainted as a weed, was used by the Germans for making porridge. Rice was first cultivated in Italy at the end of the fifteenth, and maize at the beginning of the seventeenth, century. Potatoes and tomatoes were brought from America ; artichokes seem to be nothing but
chap, XII AND OF CAPITAL 65
of estates, to the occupation of pasture lands, or to the tillage of petty holdings. A very distinct view of the first of these is presented to us in the description given by Cato.
The Roman land -estates were, considered as larger holdings, uniformly of limited extent. That described by Cato had an area of 240 jugera; a very common measure was the so-called centuria of 200 jugera. Where the laborious culture of the vine was pursued, the unit of husbandry was made still less ; Cato assumes in that case an area of 100 jugera. Any one who wished to invest more capital in farming did not enlarge his estate, but acquired several estates; accordingly the amount of 500
Farming of estates. Their size,
381), fixed as the maximum which was allow able to occupy, has been conceived to represent the contents of two or three estates.
jugera
The heritable lease was not recognised in the manage- Manage
ment of Italian private any more than of Roman public ment of the estate.
a cultivated variety of the cardoon which was known to the Romans, yet the peculiar character superinduced by cultivation appears of more recent origin. The almond, again, or " Greek nut," the peach, or " Persian nut," and also the "soft nut" (nux mollusca), although originally foreign to Italy, are met with there at least 150 years before Christ. The date-palm, introduced into Italy from Greece as into Greece from the East, and forming a living attestation of the primitive commercial-religious intercourse between the west and the east, was already cultivated in Italy 300 years before Christ (Liv. x. 47; Pallad.